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Re: Are interracial couples acceptable?[ W: 330]

Originally Posted by MildSteel

I disagree strongly with your assertion that multiculturalism is an infection. Rather, the problem is the underlying arrogance, uncontrolled lust, anger, and greed. European imperialism is largely responsible for the transplantation of people from various parts of the world into foreign lands. When they do so, they bring their cultures. Since the powers that be are not going to undo what has been done, e.g. compensate for stolen resources, we have no choice but to learn how to live together and appreciate and cherish one another.

If you want to say, that's a disease, I would put forward that the disease is your own malice.

I believe his notion of "forced multiculturalism" is the 1964 Civil Rights Act, those laws that effectively eliminated Jim Crow racial segregation and discrimination in the American South. He especially opposes laws that prevent businesses serving the public from discriminating. Those were also the type of laws opposed by Enoch Powell in his famous "River of Blood" speech when he claimed such laws would inevitably lead to violence. Whether that was a promise, threat or prophecy is a matter of opinion. Although England suffers from the existence of nationalist bigots and some racist violence, the streets aren't really filled with blood and from what I saw in my last visit, the diverse people of England generally get along just fine, just as we usually do in the USA.

Re: Are interracial couples acceptable?[ W: 330]

Personality can be thought of as a set of characteristics that influence people's thoughts, feelings and behavior across a variety of settings. Variation in personality is predictive of many outcomes in life, including mental health. Here we report on a meta-analysis of genome-wide association (GWA) data for personality in 10 discovery samples (17,375 adults) and five in silico replication samples (3294 adults). All participants were of European ancestry. Personality scores for Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were based on the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. . . . Results showed genome-wide significance for Openness to Experience near the RASA1 gene on 5q14.3 (rs1477268 and rs2032794, P=2.8 × 10(-8) and 3.1 × 10(-8)) and for Conscientiousness in the brain-expressed KATNAL2 gene on 18q21.1 (rs2576037, P=4.9 × 10(-8)). We further conducted a gene-based test that confirmed the association of KATNAL2 to Conscientiousness. In silico replication did not, however, show significant associations of the top SNPs with Openness and Conscientiousness, although the direction of effect of the KATNAL2 SNP on Conscientiousness was consistent in all replication samples. Larger scale GWA studies and alternative approaches are required for confirmation of KATNAL2 as a novel gene affecting Conscientiousness.

Again, this is likely another instance of throwing up some research without understanding or careful inspection.

Just a bit of searching on the subject of genome wide association reveals that although in some cases it has yielded some insight with regards to disease, in the area of human behavior it has proven itself to be unreliable with many false positives generated. This is some of what experts have to say about it

Population-based behavioral genetics has demonstrated that genotype and behavior can be
expected to covary. Although the epigenetic developmental pathways linking gene products
to complex behavior will in general be almost unimaginably complex, modern molecular
genetics has made it possible to detect small covariations between alleles and behavior that
span the complexity of the causal network..... Such associations are real and potentially
interesting, but they remain correlations— and small ones— not evidence of substantial
causal pathways between individual alleles and complex behavior or evidence of genes for
extroversion or intelligence or evidence that future scientific efforts will be most produc-
tively applied at a genetic level of analysis. If the history of empirical psychology has taught
researchers anything, it is that correlations between causally distant variables cannot be
counted on to lead to coherent etiological models.

In others words, when it comes to human behavior such as extroversion, the correlations between genotype and behavior are small and are not evidence of a causal link between the two.

Here's what another expert had to say

One of the hopes and promises of the Human Genome Sequencing Project was that it would revolutionize the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of most human disorders. It would do this by uncovering the supposed “genetic bases” of human behavior. With a few exceptions, however, the search for common gene variants -“polymorphisms” – associated with common diseases has borne little fruit. And when such associations have been found the polymorphisms seem to have little predictive value and do little to advance our understanding of the causes of disease. In a 2012 study, for example, researchers found that incorporating genetic information did not improve doctors’ ability to predict disease risk for breast cancer, Type 2 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.

And to date, not a single polymorphism has been reliably associated with any psychiatric disorders nor any aspect of human behavior within the “normal” range (e.g., differences in “intelligence”).

So it appears even in the area of disease where some limited progress was made with associating gene variation with disease, it yielded very little of practical value. And furthermore in the area of human behavior, there have been no reliable associations made.

So again, you have to be careful about what you put forward in terms of research and statistics. If you don't know what you are looking at, you will confuse not only others but yourself as well.

Re: Are interracial couples acceptable?[ W: 330]

Again, this is likely another instance of throwing up some research without understanding or careful inspection.

Just a bit of searching on the subject of genome wide association.

You're funny. I love how you have to search a topic and then feel qualified to render judgment by pointing to some researchers who critique the work of other researchers. You're completely oblivious to the undercurrents in play here. And quoting Turkheimer, that was priceless.

Here's an old movie for you that someone finally put on the internet. I show this movie regularly and it seems to always bother some of the viewers. The work is by the late Prof. Dan Freedman and while his work on the behavior of dog breeds had no problem getting published, when he turned his attention to humans he met with a lot of resistance form numerous journals until the editor of Nature broke a peer review deadlock and finally published his work. It's kind of hard to argue that 30 hour old babies have been enculturated to behave as they have.

Formerly of the Southern USA, now permanently in the mountains of Panama

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Re: Are interracial couples acceptable?[ W: 330]

Originally Posted by DDD

This may have been the idea behind the "cultural melting pot" of USA. How did it work till now?

Well, we haven't achieved that, so what is your real point? And even if we had, there are many countries out there that have remained basically racially homogeneous...so there remains great variety; the world is still, currently, wonderfully heterogeneous.

"...But resist we much, we must and we will much, about that be committed..." --- the right Reverend Alfred Charles "Al" Shaprton, Jr.

Re: Are interracial couples acceptable?[ W: 330]

Originally Posted by RiverDad

You're funny. I love how you have to search a topic and then feel qualified to render judgment by pointing to some researchers who critique the work of other researchers. You're completely oblivious to the undercurrents in play here. And quoting Turkheimer, that was priceless.

Here again, I really don't think you know what you are talking about. Do you have the slightest idea how statistical significance applies to genome wide association? Have you even bothered to try to understand what statistical significance is? When those researchers say that they found genome wide significance at a particular gene, all that means is that they have found a measure of correlation between a gene variation and a certain type of behavior. It doesn't mean that the variation is the cause of the behavior. For instance, someone could conduct some research and find that there is a correlation between people who buy cigarette lighters and lung cancer. Although that is interesting to know, it does not mean that buying cigarette lighters causes lung cancer.

If people are going to throw up statistics, they should have some idea of what the statistics are actually saying. Otherwise you start to look like this guy:

You can get away with that kind of stuff until people start to really understand what you are doing.